Chromatography is a set of techniques for separating a mixture into its constituents. Generally, in a liquid chromatography analysis, a pump system takes in and delivers a mixture of liquid solvents (and/or other fluids) to a sample manager, where a sample awaits injection into the solvents. The sample is the material under analysis. Examples of samples include complex mixtures of proteins, protein precursors, protein fragments, reaction products, and other compounds, to list but a few. In an isocratic chromatography application, the composition of the liquid solvents remains unchanged, whereas in a gradient chromatography application, the solvent composition varies over time. The mobile phase comprised of a sample dissolved in a mixture of solvents (and/or other fluids), moves to a point of use, such as a separation column, referred to as the stationary phase. By passing the mobile phase through the column, the various components in the sample separate from each other at different rates and thus elute from the column at different times. A detector receives the separated components from the column and produces an output from which the identity and quantity of the analytes may be determined.
Temperature can influence the results of the analysis, affecting such properties as the separation performance of the column and the viscosity of a mobile phase. Therefore, maintaining an accurate constant column temperature is important to the accuracy and reproducibility of the results. The manner by which the column temperature is controlled is an important factor. Convective column-heating systems can produce dispersion because the direct flow of air onto the columns interacts with internal viscous heating to produce radial gradients. An alternative to convective column-heating systems are heated trough designs. However, heated trough designs for long chromatography columns or series of columns can be expensive and a challenge to control.
In addition, accurate preheating of the fluid being delivered to the separation column can be critical to producing consistent retention times. If the temperature of the mobile phase supplied to the column is not constant, for example, for long (e.g., multi-hour) chromatographic runs where the variations in room temperature are significant, the accuracy of the chromatographic analysis can degrade. A device to pre-heat the mobile phase is sometimes used to reduce temperature fluctuations at the column inlet. However, exact control of the mobile phase is difficult to achieve with any system and often involves an offset. Current passive heaters are even less accurate because of lack of feedback.